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When an anti-war activist from Bethesda received copies of a file the Maryland State Police were keeping on his protest activities, one mention stood out.

An entry, dated June 21, 2005, said the federal Department of Homeland Security office in Atlanta had forwarded to state police two e-mails about planned protests of the Silver Spring Armed Forces Recruitment Center.

The e-mail sender's name was blacked out in the heavily redacted document, but the descriptor "an affiliate of the DC DAWN Network" was visible.

Patrick Elder, the founder of DAWN — the D.C. Anti-War Network — says that he is the "affiliate" who sent the e-mails organizing the protests. Prompted by recommendations from a state investigator, state police had given Elder access to his file.

But Elder began to wonder whether the federal government was watching as well.

In a letter, dated Sept. 10, to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says DHS did not try to infiltrate DAWN nor did it keep files on the organization. In fact, she said, any information from Homeland Security that ended up in Maryland State Police hands was obtained through public Internet sites.

Activists spied upon by state police hope a state law that took effect this week will shed light on the extent of covert surveillance at the state level.

A provision of the law requires police to contact citizens — including Elder — whose peaceful activities were labeled "terrorism" in a police database used to track drug trafficking and terrorism.

But questions about the extent of federal government surveillance of activists' operations remain.

Napolitano addressed specific questions from Mikulski (D) and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D) of Wisconsin after a series of letters between the senators, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies that were prompted by news accounts of the state police spying.

"The information collected was found by an agent on a publically (sic) accessible internet message board," Napolitano wrote. "It was not treated as intelligence, evidence and no record was maintained."

The state's investigation into the spying scandal found that activists' peaceful activities were labeled "terrorism" in the state police database, which was used to track drug trafficking and terrorism. The information was then passed along to a federal database for the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., region.

Napolitano's response went on to state: "The DHS official intended only to share information as it related to public safety and the protection of federally owned and occupied facilities" and that "No efforts were made to communicate with or infiltrate the group broadcasting the information."

Elder isn't so sure that federal agents weren't following his group more closely.

"We don't have any substantive proof," he said. "But you feel it."

Elder recalls DAWN meetings leading up to the recruiting center protests. For weeks, the same 18 to 20 people attended the meetings, which were open to the public.

Then, as the first protest date approached, some people started asking unusual questions that Elder said suggested that they were not regulars in the peace movement. Did protesters intend to smash windows of the center? What about lying down in the street to block traffic?

An agent with DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Federal Protective Services found information about the protests on a message board, Napolitano wrote.

Elder said he moderates the message board as part of a Yahoo! group that has 498 members and has received 4,849 messages since he started it in September 2001.

"The information was neither stored, analyzed, nor investigated for any criminal activity by DHS; it was simply shared to increase the situational awareness of an event that might impact a partner agency's area of responsibility," Napolitano wrote.

DHS never opened a criminal investigation into the group's activities, she wrote.

"In Secretary Napolitano, we have new leadership at the Department of Homeland Security with a strengthened commitment to the protection of our civil liberties," Mikulski said in an e-mailed statement. "Americans exercising their First Amendment right to nonviolent protest should not end up on a federal terrorism watch list. I remain vigilant in ensuring this never happens again."

A Mikulski spokeswoman said the senator will "monitor the situation."

Elder and other activists named in the state police database share the belief that they were targeted because of their standing in protest movements at the national and international level.

Police tactics at last week's G-20 summit in Pittsburgh show there is more, not less, government surveillance taking place, activists say.

The new state law won't change that at the federal level, Elder said.

"People tend to give the Obama administration a pass," he said. "But as far as it goes, it seems they're continuing Bush administration policies of shredding the Fourth Amendment."